Original Title: The jailed $6B bitcoin fraudster who wanted to be Liberland's queen
Original Author: Proto Staff
Translated by: Peggy, BlockBeats
Editor’s Note: In the history of cryptocurrency, few scams have been as absurd and large-scale.
Qian Zhimin, the Chinese woman who claimed she wanted to be crowned queen in the "micro-nation," was ultimately sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in prison by a British court for orchestrating a scam involving 60,000 bitcoins, totaling $6 billion.
She once fantasized about building temples, wearing a crown, and being crowned in Liberland. Now, however, she faces the collapse of the myth she wove behind bars.
The following is the original text translation.
From Queen Dreams to Prison Gates
Qian Zhimin's life story reads like an absurd "cryptocurrency fairy tale."
The 47-year-old Chinese woman was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison by a British court for planning and leading a $6 billion bitcoin scam. After initiating and executing the scam in China, she fled to the UK in 2017. Seven years later, in 2024, she was arrested in York and admitted to multiple criminal charges in a British court the following year.
But before her arrest, her ambitions went far beyond just "making money."
According to the Financial Times, in her online diary, Qian Zhimin claimed she wanted to "ascend the throne" as the queen of the "micro-nation" Liberland, led by Sun Yuchen, and planned to invite the Dalai Lama to crown her as a "goddess." She envisioned building Buddhist temples, an airport, and a port on the 7 square kilometers of land wedged between Croatia and Serbia, and even intended to spend $5 million to create her own crown and scepter.
And it didn't stop there. British media revealed that she also planned to win over a British duke and buy a Swedish castle to add a touch of continental flair to her "kingdom."
The problem is, Liberland is not a place that needs a "queen." This unrecognized "country" claims to be a democratic republic (rather than a monarchy), with founder Vít Jedlička serving as president, while cryptocurrency billionaire and TRON founder Sun Yuchen has been elected prime minister five times in a row.
The Illusion of 300% Returns and 120,000 Victims
At the peak of the scam, she promised investors returns of up to 300% and claimed the project had "high-level support," even stating that investment promotion meetings could be held in China's legislative assembly—until the scam collapsed.
Investigations revealed that before she fled to the UK, over 120,000 people had been defrauded, with funds equivalent to about 60,000 bitcoins involved. After that, she collaborated with a former delivery worker to launder money, and over the years, the value of these bitcoins skyrocketed to $6 billion.
Currently, the whereabouts of this massive bitcoin asset remain uncertain. Lawyers have disclosed that thousands of victims are attempting to recover their funds through legal means, but due to layers of transfers and local promoters' involvement, providing evidence is extremely difficult.
Reports indicate that related civil recovery cases are expected to go to trial early next year, at which point the specific disposition of this enormous amount of bitcoin will be determined.
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